Posted on 08/23/2005 8:57:45 PM PDT by WJHII
The True History of Palestine: The Nation-State Fallacy
By William John Hagan
The Houston Home Journal (Warner Robins, GA) Print Edition 08/24/2005
The current debate on the inevitable future of the Palestinian Nation seems to lack one simple fact: Palestine has no past and was never a sovereign nation. The closest thing the Palestinian people have to a history is that there was once a British Colony from which they had stolen their modern name.
After the Allied victory in World War Two, it became clear to even the most anti-Semitic Westerners that the Jewish People deserved to have their nation restored. The Nation of Israels first record of historically existence is a mention in the Book of Exodus (3:16), however, even earlier references are made in Genesis to the tribes of Israel. It is both biblical and historical fact that Israel was founded by Moses after the Jewish expulsion from Egypt by Ramases II. This would place this event sometime between 1290 and 1224 BC. The reality that the Palestinians want to keep from you is that there has been a Jewish presence in Israel for almost 3300 years.
The history of the Palestinian People in far more recent than that of their Jewish neighbors. In fact, Palestine was created by the British Empire in the days after World War II. According to Rockwell Lazareth author of the essay Who are the Palestinians?, There has never been a civilization or a nation referred to as Palestine and the very notion of a Palestinian Arab nation having ancient attachments to the Holy Land going back to time immemorial is one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetrated upon the world! There is not, nor has there ever been, a distinct Palestinian culture or language. Further, there has never been a Palestinian state governed by Arab Palestinians in history, nor was there ever a serious Arab-Palestinian national movement until 1964.
The most disturbing reality is that the Palestinians are not even Arabs at all but Canaanites who have over the years adopted Arab culture and language. For all their history, the Canaanites have been a nomdic sea-faring people who traveled between such nations as Lebannon, Syria,and Turkey but making a premenant home in no land. The British allowed these modren Palastinian Canaanites to set up their tents in colonial Palestine so they could be used as a cheap source of labor for the citrus industry. This historical fact leaves the so-called Palestinians with a far more blundering claim to Israel than illegal Mexican immigrants would have to the United States.
In 1948, the British rewarded their fruit pickers by dividing the colony of Palestine into two states: one Jewish and the other Arab or should we say Canaanite. It was at this moment that the term Palestinain was first used to exclusivly refer to nomadic Canaanites. The Palestinains responded to the Englands generosity by invading the newly reborn Isreali state, with help from the armies of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. To the worlds amazement Israel emerged the victor. The Arabs further demonstrated military prowess by, again, invading Israel in 1967. This time they lost control of Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.
In the years that followed, Yasser Arafats PLO murdered thousands of Israelis, in fact he made Bin Laden look like a piker. Today, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is fulfilling Arafats dying wish and taking land from the industrious Israelis so that a Palestinian Nation can be born. The Israelis had taken the deserts of Gaza and turned them into an oasis of prosperity, all while under the guns of PLO terrorists. These very settlers who sacrificed their own children for a greater Israel are today being sacrificed by Sharon to the False Idol of Appeasement.
Letters to the editor of The Houston Home Journal may be e-mail to: mailto: rgambill@evansnewspapers.com (Please Include Your Name and Location)
William John Hagan can be contacted directly by e-mail at: William_Hagan@excite.com
Or visited on the Web at:
http://williamjohnhagan.blogspot.com
I would have more confidence in his writing if he could spell.
Gaza will become a sewer within 6 months.
More like six weeks..
Interesting.
Who is John Hagan?
Sorry, I was deaf as a kid so I leave that to my editors and microsoft. I haven't seen the print version yet,so please excuse the spelling error.
Bill
Well, I think that if the Palestinians ("nomadic Canaanites"), after having been given Gaza, continue with terror against Israel, then Israel should be, and hopefully will be, ruthless.
bump for later
I'm no expert on the Palestinian / Israeli question. In fact, I'm no more than an interested bystander. And I happen to agree that Sharon is nuts for abandoning Gaza. Appeasement will not solve anything while the militant groups continue to advocate the destruction of Israel.
You'd have to ask Webster's,but it just sounds like good old fashion PC History.
As for the statements about Moses 1250 etc, it is by no means accepted history but decidedly contentious. Leading Egyptian scholars doubt Moses existed as a historical personage. The word is Egyptian for "son of". There are any number of "so-and-so"moses in Egyptian history, but "son of" without a who the son is of, is unknown.
Some scholars think Israel as a distinct nation dates only from 900 BC, which is old enough to establish "3000 years" and one would think, sufficient. Established monotheism appears to date only to the return from the Babylonian captivity around 540 BC (reign of Cyrus) - pre-exile Israel was pagan-polytheist.
The claims are evidence the writer is pushing literalist claims, not present ones.
As for the statement that all western nations thought Jews deserved their own state after WW II, it is not accurate. The Brits fought against the establishment of Israel and sought to prevent emigration to colonial Palestine. Jews waged a terrorist war for independence against British troops. Britain left at the time it gave up most of its colonies - it was too poor to keep them after WW II. A UN mandate sought to divide the country but was unrealistic and unenforced. War determined the initial boundaries of the new state. The US was quick to recognize and support Israel. Britain was cool.
The 1956 war, when the Israelis were the ones doing the attacking, in concert with France and Britain, is left out. The US forced a climb down that humiliated Britain nd France. France became a patron of Israel at that time - that is where Israel got its nuclear technology for example, working with the French.
As for the statements about Arafat, yes he was an out and out terrorist from the start. A Moscow trained one. Left out of his history here is the fact that he tried to take over the kingdom of Jordan in a revolution in 1970, getting the Palestinian population of Jordan to rise against the ruling minority Hashamite tribe. That failed, with 5000 killed, and set him packing to Lebanon. Which served as his terror base until 1982 when Israel again was the one doing the invading, to smash the PLO. The US under Reagan saved the PLO diplomatically, earning truck bombings and a near war with Syria for our pains, and still bundled Arafat off to Tunisia and safety.
Arab nationalists want Israel destroyed. Islamic fundamentalists want Israel destroyed. Israel does not in the least require moldly old books to enforce its claim to live, all it needs is common sense and the bravery of its sons. No permission is needed from heaven or earth to defend oneself against implacable and unjust enemies. It is entirely normal for control of a country to rest on the right of conquest. Challenging a previous result is called war, and fully justifies the previous winner in winning again, as ruthlessly as he needs to.
As for claims to the place, it has been ruled by Eyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arab Muslims, Christian Crusaders, Turks, the British, and modern Israel. The only constant in its history is turmoil and unending strife. The only claim anyone has ever had to it is conquest. It is all they have had and all they have needed, it is all Israel has today and all it needs.
Most "Palestinians" are actually from the area formerly known as the Trans-Jordan. Hussein of Jordan didn't want them back when Israel was made a nation by the UN. Thus the people were stuck in crappy refugee camps and their situation was never made better by any of the Arab nations, because to do so would have been to acknowledge the existence of Israel. So those people sat in those camps for a couple of generations in poverty breeding terrorists.
Good anaylsis.
I am glad I am not stuck in a place like that.
A little more detail...
The First Palestinian State
by Emanuel A. Winston
Dec 10, '03 / 15 Kislev 5764
Oh. You didnt know there was a First Palestinian State?
Its not necessary to go back to 1964 when, with Egypts help, the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) was formed - with the sole intent of engaging in terror for the purpose of conquering the Jewish State, with the assistance of all the Arab/Muslim nations. Those goals of the PLO have not changed.(1) Yasser Arafat was elected Chairman of the PLO in 1969.
Arafat and his terrorists ended up in the Kingdom of Jordan after a series of unsuccessful wars by the Arab/Muslim nations against Israel. There, they arrogantly walked the streets of Amman well-armed and with supreme confidence. They intimidated the people of Jordan. Between 1967 and 1971, the PLO challenged King Hussein for political control of Jordan. Hussein made 26 agreements to keep the Peace. Arafat signed them all and broke them all. The last straw would be when Arafat put out a kill order for King Husseins brother, who commanded the Jordanian Army and, particularly, the special Bedouin troops who had clashed numerous times with Arafats thugs. This was not going to be Arafats State by coup detat, but it was a lesson in his MO (Modus Operandi).
Husseins Army was called up and a memorable slaughter of Arafats followers took place, an event the Arab Palestinians called "Black September".(2) The major conflict began in September 1970, but took 17 months until Arafats terrorists fled, mostly into Lebanon. However, many crossed the Jordan and were rescued by Israeli settling pioneers on the west side of the Jordan River.
In Lebanon, the Arab Palestinians were greeted with open arms by their so-called brother Arabs. It was a case of mistaken identity, which the Lebanese did not know then was a one-sided hudna (time of false peace, rest and re-arming for Arafats terrorists). To this day, the Lebanese people bitterly regret opening their borders to Arafats Arab Palestinians.
Then, it began. Arafat first established the parameters of a terror state much as they started to do in Jordan before Black September. Wherever they gained critical mass in numbers and arms, that area of the city or country became theirs. Every street corner was an Arab Palestinian checkpoint to collect pass-through money, but also, frequently, to rape women passengers, steal cars and extort whatever they wanted. As in Jordan, Arafats Arab Muslim Palestinian gunman acted as conquerors, threatening everyone, looting and taxing through terror.
As Arafat expanded his control over Christian and Muslim Lebanese, they too became part of the conflict that became a 12-year Civil War, killing 100,000 Christian and Muslim Lebanese.
Lebanon had once been called the Paris of the Middle East, the Garden of Eden spot for vacationing Arabs, with a Banking Center for the Arab world - but all that was destroyed. The Christians and Muslims had worked out a peaceful, political accommodation to run Lebanon and, particularly, Beirut. Arafat had stirred them up, so now they were bitter enemies, attacking each other and fighting Arafats Palestinian Mini-State of Terror. The killings went on day and night, with whole villages massacred, with a retaliatory massacre soon after. Arafat turned the various Arab refugee camps into his bases of operation. Weapons and explosives were stored in apartment building, hospitals and schools, using the civilians as human shields.
As confusion and terror reigned, Arafat continued to expand his mini-State of Palestine with the presumption that one day all of Lebanon would be a Palestinian State.
Arafats methods were a mirror image of what Americans found in Iraq, particularly Bagdad, where Saddams family and Republican Guards wreaked havoc. Granted, Saddams regime was larger and very well-funded, but the hideous brutality was virtually the same.
Arafats gunman roamed the streets with modified pick-up trucks, manned with 30-50 caliber guns mounted in back. They were looking for various factions of Christian militia to gun down, but Muslims were also shot dead - as were any of the few Jews who still lived in Lebanon. (By that time, the Arab/Muslim nations had ejected almost all of their Jews (approximately 800,000) and had confiscated all their property and assets - personal and community. In effect, this was a replay of Hitler and Europes confiscation of all that their Jews owned.)
Arafat launched frequent terrorist cross border attacks into Israel from his safe Mini-State in Lebanon - just as does HezbAllah does now. HezbAllah, a fierce terror organization based in Lebanon, is run by Syria and funded by Iran. When those attacks became intolerable, Prime Minister Begin gave Defense Minister Gen. Ariel Sharon permission to attack Arafats Terror State in Lebanon. The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) discovered and exposed many things that were photographed, catalogued and described in books published subsequently about the savagery of Arafats treatment of his Lebanese brothers. As today, the Left-leaning liberal media ignored what Israel had discovered, but they did castigate Israel for daring to respond to Palestinian terror attacks.
Israels early encounters came from what then was called the RPG Kids (Rocket-Propelled Grenade). These were 9- to 11-year old kids who were trained (on Arafats orders) to use rocket-propelled grenades and hide behind their seemingly innocent youth. Many Israeli soldiers were killed because they hesitated to kill mere children. However, these were not mere children; they were fully trained Palestinian killers who were merely smaller than Arafats regular terrorists. They were trained from early childhood to hate, kill and obey their master. (That education to hate, kill and obey continues to this day in the Palestinian Authority.)
The IDF discovered miles of machine-dug tunnels, stocked full of arms, ammunition and plans for the next major war against Israel - aimed at her elimination. These were the pre-stocked positions for planned advancing Palestinians, with regular Syrian troops, into Israel. I believe it was the Austrians who supplied the huge tunnel-digging machines, which could dig wide tunnel into the Lebanese mountains, thus allowing large trucks to deliver their deadly loads.(1)
When Israeli troops broke through into Beirut in 1982, they were again shocked at what they found. Much the same as in 2003, American troops were shocked when they entered various compounds of Saddam Hussein and his two sons, Uday and Qusay. Torture rooms, masochistic sex rooms and always the fields of hundreds of thousands executed Iraqis - with Shiites and Kurds topping the list.
In 1982 when the Israeli soldiers entered the hospitals in Lebanon, they found Lebanese Christians bodies stacked like cordwood in the hallways. Their blood had been totally drained for transfusions into Arafats wounded, more worthy fighters (on Arafats orders).
Arafats men often used a special torture and death on captured prisoners. Copying the Roman technique of drawing and quartering captured prisoners for the amusements of the crowds, Arafat used four cars to slowly pull a man apart by driving in four different directions. Here, too, the mob of Arafatian Arabs found this to be exciting and cheered. This mind-set is endemic in most Arab nations; we recall the two Americans in Mosul, Iraq, being shot, pulled from their car, having their throats slit, and being mutilated. Then the mob moved in to crush their heads with cement blocks, and to stamp on the two doomed soldiers.(3) The surrounding mobs cheered delightedly.
This, in turn, was similar to the lynching the Arab Palestinians committed against the two Israeli soldiers who made a wrong turn into RamAllah,(4 ) and the frequent lynching of their own people who they accuse of being collaborators.(5)
Then, there was the matter of the village leaders in Lebanon (the mukhtars of the village) paying baksheesh, a.k.a. protection money, to keep his own village protected from Arafats murdering marauders. One mukhtar refused to pay protection money. So, Arafats collectors kidnaped the mukhtars teen-age daughter, raped her, cut off her breasts and delivered her back to the mukhtars doorstep in a gunny sack.(1) No tax collector of a mini-state could have been more convincing.
There were thousands of these examples, photographed, catalogued, books written and all seemingly forgotten - except for some.(1)
This was Arafats First Palestinian State, which was crumpled by the invasion by Israel in 1982, when Arafat and his killers came under American protection as they shipped out to Tunis. Later, under the auspices of Oslo, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres resurrected Arafat, gave his Arab Palestinians and Arafat a reprieve and invited them back. Most recall what followed their return. Since Oslo was signed September 13, 1993 - 1,500 Israelis (and at least 45 Americans) were brutally murdered and hundreds of thousands wounded - many maimed for life.
Without the exact count of the Arab Palestinians tortured and murdered at Arafats orders in those territories handed to him under Oslo, there have been hundreds. Then, one must add in those suicide bombers - the young men, women and children convinced or brainwashed to blow themselves up in order to kill Jews and ascend to Muslim Paradise and receive 72 virgins.
When Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu turned over Hebron under pressure from America (expecting gratitude from America, which he did not get), the Palestinian businessmen begged Israel not to leave. They knew what was coming. In all the territories given over to Arafat and his Palestinian Authority, every business, manufacturer, farm suddenly had a new partner in one of Arafats officers. That was Al Capones business: the protection racket, which Arafat carried to astonishing levels of corruption.
Even the Arab Palestinians in the Eastern section of Jerusalem want Israeli citizenship, before they fall under the control of Arafat at the behest of the Bush Administration - now a not-so-silent partner of the Geneva Accords.
Wherever Arafat and his Arab Palestinians achieved a critical mass, they tried to produce a State born out of terror, torture, blackmail and extortion. The Arab Palestinian State that the Bush Administration is trying to create through the Road Map - and now through aberrant Leftist Jews, employed by the E.U. (European Union) - cannot be anything else but what it has always been.
It doesnt matter that Israel is forced back to her indefensible 1967, or even her 1949, borders, or that there is no wall to separate terror from civilization. Arafat and his Arab Palestinians have proven time and again that any entity they can control, be it a state or merely a city, immediately becomes a base for launching terror and suppressing their own people. After all, why would Arafat and his Arab Muslim Palestinians rule any differently than Saddam of Iraq, the Assads of Syria, the Ayatollahs of Iran, etc.?
Should Israel and Bush be foolish enough to actually give Arafat or his successor a large base of operations called a state, with Jerusalem as its capital, rest assured that, like Saddams Iraq, Syria or Iran, they will begin absorbing high-tech weapons of mass destruction, including NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical), and their reach will be shockingly far. They are already linked up with Syria and Iran, and had been closely linked to Iraq, and will probably be again when Bush pulls the American troops home - before elections. This new terrorist state will never be satisfied with a Palestinian State on only the West Bank.
The new state will use the Palestinians in Jordan, who are already 75% of the population (or more), to overthrow King Abdullah. Then, it is just a matter of time before they subvert the region, in lockstep with the other terror state of Syria.
So, this is the preamble to what will be the Second State of Palestine, courtesy of the Bush family and a weakened Israeli Prime Minister. Look at a map of the neo-Palestinian State, the centerpiece of a chain of Islamic nations going north and south, which are to be a choke chain for Israel and the region. This then will be the legacy of Bush and Sharon to the Free World and the people of Israel - guaranteed terror for millions in Israel and the Free West for years to come. Arafats terror state will have many godfathers - not the least of whom would be Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Yossi Beilin, the U.N., the Europeans, Colin Powell and the pro-Arab U.S. State Department, the Bush family, James Baker III, among many others.
As I said at the beginning, the Arab Palestinians had a first terror mini-state in Lebanon, which demonstrated the prototype and Arafats MO - terror and murder. The godfathers know all of this, but they plunge ahead - often with Israels acceptance of a born-to-die fate, which some Jews have accepted as their destiny. They would rather be de-Judaized as their entrance into acceptance by the world of nations.
Let us hope and pray that a new leader will emerge who will understand that Israel must say: "No!" to their American friends; "No!" to the Europeans; "No!" to the U.N.; "No!" to the Arab League; and "Absolutely no!" to acceptance of a so-called mini-state of unremitting terror.
Footnotes:
1. PLO: Now the Story Can Be Told by Eliyahu Tal; WZO (World Zionist Organization, 1982). Listing Terror Attacks Perpetrated Against Israeli Diplomatic Missions (1969-79) with photos, foreign allies, funders, victims and witnesses stories; Terrorists & Child Terrorists in Action: "On a summer night in 1964, 3 years before the Six Days War, Yasser Arafat forded the River Jordan, climbed a hill near Nablus [Shechem], fired one shot from his pistol and declared: "The Jihad (holy war) has begun."
PLO in Lebanon: Documents, Research & Photos, edited by Prof. Rafael Israeli.
The PLO Exposed by Britain Israel Public Affairs Committee; December 1982.
2. "Black September in Jordan 1970-71", from OnWar.com. Within the space of two hours on September 6, 1970, PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] gangs hijacked a TWA jet, a Swissair jet, and made an unsuccessful attempt to seize control of an El Al airplane. About two hours later, another PFLP group hijacked a Pan Am jet and forced the crew to fly to Beirut airport, where the airplane landed almost out of fuel. The next day, the airliner was flown to the Cairo airport, where it was blown up only seconds after the 176 passengers and crew had completed their three-minute forced evacuation.
3. "Lynch of American Soldiers"; "On the Objective Support of Terror" from http://phaedo.typepad.com/phaedo/2003/11/on_the_objectiv.html.
4. "Italian TV Apologized to the PA for Screening the Video of the Lynching of the 2 Israeli Soldiers of Ramallah" from Israels Media Watch on Arutz Sheva News Service on October 18, 2000; also on http://geocities.com/CapitolHill/2527/press104.htm.
5. "Lynch in Manger Square, Bethlehem - while AP tries to Hide the Pictures"; March 15, 2002, from http://gamla.org.il/english/feature/lynch2a.htm.
http://www.israelnn.com/article.php3?id=3069
Poverty does not breed terrorism, most terrorists are upper or upper middle class. Islam breeds terrorism, but it takes money to be one.
Like everything else about Islam, Palestine is founded on lies, plagarism, murder and hatred.
The article at the Houston Home Journal is no longer there.
Ping!
..................
That is a most excellent article, needs its own thread.
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